The New World

[Man of Steam]

"Right" Alex said, unbuttoning his shirt. "My plan for the distraction is to make an argument with one of the passengers, that should draw some of the crew over to break us up. While I'm doing that everyone else can do what they need to. I'll break away from the crowd and join you, does that sound good?"

[Rosalia]

Rosie nodded and took a facial expression of confidence.

[Augustus Longeye]

"Well Luke, shall we be off?" Julius asked. He listened to a few rooms before he found one that no sound came from, before quietly opening it and ducking inside. He pulled Luke with him, and then spent a few minutes going through the luggage inside, looking for suitable clothing. He found a few sets of basic trousers and plain shirts, then some more formal wear and finally a set of workman's overalls.
"I'll have the formal wear I think, then change into the plain clothes when we leave. It also seems we weren't the only ones to be cautious..." He said as he uncovered a small hand gun, a dagger and a sabre wrapped in clothes. He debated about the sabre for a moment before finally strapping it on.
"What have you got there? We should get ready and search the nearest room for anything." He asked Luke.

[Vancouver Air Privateer]

"Steam Engines have been my interest since I came to England." replied Cenek. "I try to keep on the cutting edge so I think that the boilers should be easy enough - we want to destroy them, not make new ones."

He waited until Arx was back to unfurl a diagram of the ship he had "borrowed".

"Alright, gentlemen..." he said, looking it over. "The boilers are... here, in this section of the ship. The entrance is here... but I fear that using that might cause us to run into someone on their rounds. Now, Arx here has done some... exploring of the... between-places of the ship. I think he should guide us to this point, here. Fergus, you can then undo the ventilation grill on the wall and we can sneak in the "back door" as it were."

He gestured to the boilers. "It should be a quick task for me to sabotage the boilers... if you feel you know enough, Fergus, you could handle half of them as well. Arx, you are sharp of eye and ear and should keep a watch for us. Once all the boilers are disabled, the ship's engines will fail. This will be, of course, noticeable, and we should be well on our way to the rendezvous by then. Sound good?"

[The Corsair]

"Definitely." He agreed while tearing through a set of drawers. He didn't really care if they left a trace.
"Make it a serious argument but avoid being detained. We want the crew to feel it is so serious they must pull away members from the tug stations and attach ropes to the tug with the minimum crew required."
He found a simple enough outfit and pulled the curtain-bandanna over part of his face so as to make him recognisable by the others but not by any other person aboard the vessel.

[Man of Steam]

"of course, I have a plan to avoid being detained" Alex said with a grin. He rummaged through the drawers till he found what he was looking for.
"perfect!" he exclaimed as he pulled out a velvet coat, sensing Falko's confusion, he turned to explain
"my goal is to make my self look like a gentleman, as it is my experience that they are believed more." He then reached into his bag, and pulled out a small leather case. He opened it, and pulled out a clay vial. Opening the vial, he poured drops of a gel into his had. He rubbed the gel into his hair, and looking into a hand mirror he had, saw that his hair was now a shade of dirty blond. Slipping on the coat and putting the case back into his bag.
"Well?" he asked Falko "How do I look?"

[The Corsair]

"Like the London gentry have been robbed of sophistication. Now do head off. I'll keep watch while Rosie finds an outfit."

The two left the room leaving it free for Rosie.

[Alexis Voltaire]

"Mostly working clothes, nothing formal really" Luke replied, gathering up the outfits he had chosen. "They're about a size too big but I don't think it'll matter much for this stuff. No real useful weapons either." All he had found was a small folding knife, and though he pocketed it he doubted it would be of much use if he ran into trouble.

[Augustus Longeye]

"Shall we try another cabin for something better? If not I would suggest heading to the communication room, which should be at the stern towards the top. It'll be obvious just under the stern most mast." Julius said, slowly opening the door to check up and down the passageway.

[Alexis Voltaire]

"No, I think this'll work, give me just a minute" Luke said as he quickly changed into one of the outfits he had chosen. He left his old clothes behind, realizing it wouldn't matter whether anyone found them or not.

"I would like to get one thing from my cabin though, it's on the way so it shouldn't take much time." He said, remembering something as he followed Julius out of the cabin and towards the back of the ship.

He stopped at his cabin a few minutes later, and quickly opening his suitcase took out the journal and tucked it into the inner pocket of the faded gray coat he was wearing. He didn't want to leave the journal behind if he didn't have to, and it might be a bad idea to do so in any case if the wrong people found it and were able to translate it. "Alright, got it. Lets go." He said, closing the door of his cabin behind him.

[MWBailey]

"a boiler's a boiler."Fergus said. Trutyh to tell he'd worked on a couple of ship boilers, but that was years ago. The notations on the ship's diagram indicated that the ones on this ship were almost idential to those on the Calliope, the troopship he'd sailed home on, however. He'd volunteered to help with her boilers when the Engineer's mates had gone down with the croup,

High-pressure units, with superheaters routed to piston expansions, vapor collectors, and reheaters preceding the boiler recirculators; a really bad thing to have overpressurized, but relatively easy to render unable to pressurize.  "I'll take 'alf of 'em like you said."

[Augustus Longeye]

Julius quickly navigated his way on deck, having cracked the layout during his random wanderings over the past few weeks. Once there he led Luke to the rear of the ship, and the pair of them scouted out the right room, hidden in a tiny corner. It was a small room with two crewmen in it, chatting amicably to each other. There were various books and letters all around the room, in dozens of little holes and shelves.
"How do you want to do this?" He asked Luke.

[MWBailey]

Fergus shed his blue tailcoat as he prepared to enter the ventilation  system he'd already transferred the contents of its pockets tlo the satchel. "I'll pick up whatever coat I can on the way," he said. he had already changed into a black whipcord vest and blue denim coverall pants, one of teh purloined gray belowdecks crew uniform shirts replacing his customary white broadcloth; he kept his broughams (in the satchel, to avoid making noise) and hat for the journey through the vents. The holster was back on the belt in a trice, crossdraw style, and as they headed through the system he made every effort to be as silent as possible.

[Man of Steam]

Alex stepped onto the deck, looking at the crew and passengers scattered around. He looked for a minute, and spotting someone he could use, began to walk towards them.

[The Corsair]

Rosie was soon out of the cabin in an androgynous set of clothes. It was enough to make her appear to be a man but to anyone who payed a few extra second's attention she was clearly a woman.
Not that it was too big a deal.

The two of them headed toward a lower section of deck where the crewmen would soon be met by a tugboat. he hoped Alex hadn't gone too far from the area.

The crewmen were standing in a circle having a rather jubilant conversation, regularly erupting in raucous laughter. They were most certainly not paying attention to their surroundings and were making more than enough noise to cover the movements of the two of them.
He counted four crewmen all in all. Hopefully at least one would be lured away by Alex's soon-to-be confrontation with some unknown passenger but if not then, with the element of surprise, they could probably overwhelm the four of them, though the tug  crew may notice and flee.

The two swiftly entered, staying low and quiet, and hid behind some crates of unusable kitchen leftovers. It stank, but that meant the crewmen would probably avoid it if they could help it.
He crouched and waited for the sounds of an argument to roll down from the upper decks. He clutched Rosie's hand and her revolver in his free hand. They had to really pick their moment.

[Man of Steam]

Alex strolled across the deck,heading towards a cluster of people enjoying the night air. While walking by, he purposely tripped and fell, knocking over a young gentleman.
"terribly sorry" Alex said, helping the other man up
"Just be careful next time!" the other man said before walking away.
Alex started walking a bit, before he began to frantically search his coat and pants pocket. Turning back to the man, he pointed and shouted.
"Thief! You've stolen my wallet!" The man turned, a confused look on his face. A crowd had started to gather around the two, as Alex marched back up into the man's face.
"that's right, when I tripped, you reached into my pocket and stole my wallet!" Alex glanced around quickly and saw that the crowd contained a few of the crew members, and hoped they were the ones that had been guarding the tugboat.

[The Corsair]

A muffled and agitated call made its way down from somewhere above them.
"Theif... Wallet... Pocket... Stole my wallet"
It was definitely Alex's voice.
The crewmen were reasonably quick to react. The argument made its way to the sailors' ears in a lull in their rowdy conversation.

"Are you hearing that?"
"Scuffle above I think. Great, tug'll be here soon and we have to clear up some passenger dispute. I hope this joker doesn't have a knife."
"I'll go. Sick of tug duty anyway."

The third speaker headed off. He glided past Falko and Rosie without a second glance. Still, his passing presence cause Rosie to tighten her grip on his hand.

A second wave of sounds, this time more agitated and more numerous, rolled down.

"Damn, I'll be off to help him. You can handle this right?"

He assumed motions of agreement took place as the second man soon breezed past them.

The sounds of a hefty steam engine forcing water around it and it's casing vessel emerged from between the sounds of the scuffle above.

[MWBailey]

Thwey reached the vent that led into the boiler room, and fergus was gratified to find not only were the screw holes for the screws that held the vent up  just bent-forwaerd tongues cut from the inner surface of teh ventilation duct, but that also the screws that secured it were of the new thread-cutting design that had become all the rage several years back; there was supposed to be a patent, somewhere, and at least one manufactory that Fergus knew about was turning them out by the thousands per day via the new wire-stamping process-- but smiths all over the British Isles had been copying the absurdly-simple design and making them themselves, just as they had been making their own screws of teh old tapered, filed-spiral type for generations.*

Basically just a regular screw thread with a tapering L-shaped cut on one side of the shaft, they had the unintended property of being easy to unscrew from the shank end by inserting a small needle file into the largest end of the L (that being the bottom end of the screw) and unscrewing it thus. It as the very devil to get them started, but once they were started, the things practically unscrewed themselves. One crewman had been left obn guard, but just as Fergus was fishing his froe club out to use as a truncheon, Alex's diversion up on the Promenade Deck caused the guard to be called to the scene to help out, thus leaving the way wide open.

[The Corsair]

The tug slowly drew nearer. He could only hope the others had almost completed their tasks. He would wait until the last moment to capture the tug if necessary but once it was captured he could only wait for a very short amount of time before it was noticed that the tug was still by the ship and not guiding it in.

[Alexis Voltaire]

Luke surveyed the room quickly before moving back out of sight. Neither of the crewmen were in a position where they could be taken by surprise, or without a fight. "Well..." He said quietly and somewhat uncertainly. "best I can think of is I could go in there and tell them there's a problem out here, and when they come out to see what's going on we can take them by surprise. It'll have to be done quietly, we can't risk on of them raising the alarm..."

[MWBailey]

The system was already running down; Fergus could tell that much almost without looking at the gauges. Soon, the pistons and the axles tuning the ship's screws would cease to turn quickly enough to continue making way. Fungus called out cautiously, "Time to go, yet? The others might need help..."

[Augustus Longeye]

"Good point... "Julius thought for a moment. "Right, only one of them will leave (OOC, one is always ordered to stay) so if you deal with the one that leaves, I can deal with whoever stays?"
Without waiting a moment longer, and concious of the time, he pushed Luke to one side, and smartly knocked on the door. Without waiting for a response he pulled open the door and stepped in.
"Oi! Passengers aren't allowed back here! What do you want?" The one closest to him demanded.
"There seems to be a man round the corner who is bleeding quite heavily, I've wrapped him up but he really needs to be taken somewhere safer. Could you gather up a few people and take him below decks?" Julius asked them.
They looked confused for a moment, then sceptical.
"Don't believe me? You can go and check if you want... I'll wait here."
One of them rolled his eyes and left the room quickly. Immediately Julius drew the sword and held it the the second man's neck.
"If you move I have to qualms about killing you, so very quickly tell me where all passenger information is kept."
"Here! All of it is here, we're a commercial ship, we don't have any other records." the man gasped, trying not to move his throat.
Julius nodded and hit the man on the back of the head with the pommel of his sword. He quickly crumpled. He then looked outside to check on Luke's progress.

[Vancouver Air Privateer]

"Ah, yes... I am done with this last one... now." Said Cenek at the other end of the room. "They will surely notice now that the engines have ceased to work. We should leave as soon as possible."

As he spoke, there was suddenly some noise and the sounding of voices. They had obviously detected the lack of power faster than expected. Soon, three men moved into the boiler room - Cenek hid in the shadows behind the boiler, trapped on the far side of the room.

[Lyca]

Lyca strode along the corridor, cursing softly; she had known that the crew were planning something, that much was obvious - but this? Had she not had the good fortune to overhear that Dutch fellow - Falko, she thought is name was - and therefore taken it upon herself to flollow him and linger outside their meeting, she would not have had more than the few minutes warning that the rest of the oblivious passengers on this doomed voyage. She cursed again, rounding the corner of the corridor adjacent to her cabin, and slipped inside.

She would have to leave traces, enough to assure a salvage crew of her demise; although to those looking for her, and those who knew where to look, her survival would be evident.
She rifled through her belongings.
Various minute, complex tools made of metal and glass were tipped onto the bed. These were valuable, and rare, and usefull: some of her own design. No question about taking them. Currency. The clothing she was wearing. Her boots. A few select tomes, well worn; all were wrapped in an oilcloth bag, which she quickly tucked into a small leather satchel.
She sighed, surveying her room. The gladstone bag, with various reading and correspondance materials neatly stacked inside, she would have to leave behind. The splendid beaded gowns, and silk chantilly-trimmed drawers and chemises would have to stay beind too; she couldn't possibly carry them.
She picked up the bundle containing what appeared to be a heap of dirty rags, and began to dress. Binding her breast in a long strip of muslin, she shrugged on her leather harness, and buckled the small metal instruments to it. She wore them close to the skin, where even the finest pickpocket could not reach. On top of her harness, she shrugged on a stained, ripped linen shirt, and a small patched waistcoat. Over that, a brown jacket that could have belonged to a man twice her size, and a pair of well worn trousers. Toeing into a pair of dirty but perfectly fitting lace up boots, she caught her reflection in the mirror. She relaxed: this was easy. Familiar. Grinning rakishly, she donned a nonedescript cap, tucking her hair up underneath it. Turning on her heel, she caught up her satchel, and strode out the cabin door for the last time.

[MWBailey]

Fergus, too, slipped back into the shadows behind the hulking shape of one of the superheaters, its metal parts still ticking and banging as they cooled with the rush of overflow water from the steam dome that fed it; good thing, as the popoff safety valves in his satchel, collected from the superheaters and reheaters that he had sabotaged, chose that moment to clink against either themselves or some other metallic object within the bag. As the three men moved past his position and toward Cenek's, Fergus took out one of the hammer-head-sized pieces of machined brass that were the popoffs, and threw it underhanded deeper into the shadows behind his own place of concealment.

"What's 'at?" the biggest of the three said, as the valve clattered and banged, bouncing off of the back of the boiler, then the catwalk beside it, then down onto the deck below.  Fergus eased his froe club out of the satchel, deliberately clinking the remaining contents together, and the big fellow said, "Go git 'em, Chalky, we'll back yer up!"  Big Stuff raised his voice then. "You there, in the shadows! Who're you an' wha're ye playin' at!" He shouted in Fergus' general direction.

'Chalky' was as artless as he was pale; Fergus pressed into the shadows up againstthe still-warm superheater, and as the stocky crewman came past, up and then down, hard, went the club, a heavy blob of hickory root designed to drive the wedge-profiled froe through a billet of wood, spilitting it cleanly. 'Chalky' went down without a sound other than the melon-like resonant sound of the club hitting the back of his head. As 'Chalky' went down, the second crewman came in, and actually surprised Fergus, who hit him in teh face much harder than he inteneded, his strike fueled by sudden desperation. the man went down, with a groaning scream, his face ruined.